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Jamahl Mosley traveled the world for basketball.
He played for professional teams in Mexico, Australia, Spain, Finland and South Korea. While there, Carmelo Anthony was the player development coach for the Denver Nuggets of the NBA. He was an assistant coach with the Cleveland Cavaliers for the past four long years since LeBron James left for Miami. Dirk Nowitzki’s final years with the Mavericks and the rise of Luka Doncic? Mosley was also there as an assistant in Dallas.
He spent 16 seasons on the NBA coaching staff, honing his skills and making his debut in hopes of becoming a head coach. He had heeded his mother’s advice to play college basketball for a black coach, and learned leadership skills from someone like him. Doubts that he could land this type of job only surfaced in recent years when he was interviewed and turned down for seven NBA head coaching jobs.
“Because you knew you were qualified,” Mosley said. “You knew you were doing a good interview. You knew you had the ability to do that.”
The NBA’s coaching and executive rosters have long been dominated by white men, although more than 70 percent of players are Black. This year, however, Mosley has been part of an unusual off-season, with seven of his eight managerial vacancies filled by Black candidates. Five are first-time head coaches, including Mosley, who was hired by the Orlando Magic in July. Others are Wes Unseld Jr. of the Washington Wizards, Willie Green of the New Orleans Pelicans, Ime Udoka of the Boston Celtics and Chauncey Billups of the Portland Trail Blazers.
“If this is 15 years ago, we probably don’t get these positions,” Green said.
Thirteen of the league’s 30 coaches are currently Black and the other two are not white – the increase came during a broader national conversation about race and hiring practices. Black players used their voices to call the change they thought was overdue.
“It’s a blemish in this league that no one can deny,” said Michele Roberts, general manager of the players’ association, in an interview. “We have to keep doing better.”
‘There is a natural cultural bond’
Long before Udoka became the Celtics’ coach, he was a self-described student of the game. As a teenager in Portland, Ore, he would record plays featuring some of his favorite college players, such as Lawrence Moten of Syracuse and Lamond Murray of the University of California, Berkeley. Then he would go to the playground to imitate their movements. (Udoka still has a pile of VHS tapes in his house.)
“I wasn’t the most athletic or talented guy,” said Udoka, “so I really had to use my brain to an advantage. I always thought of the game in a certain way, and I think some coaches saw that in me.”
Udoka grew up in a predominantly Black neighborhood, attended a Black high school and had Black coaches. He wasn’t particularly racially conscious because all he knew was to be in that environment. But his high school coach “preached family, togetherness, and brotherhood,” said Udoka, and he carried those lessons with him.
Udoka was jumping in the NBA as a defensive forward when he got what he describes as a “coaching error.” In Portland, he helped form an Amateur Athletic Association team that included future NBA players Terrence Ross and Terrence Jones. Udoka also attended coaching clinics hosted by the NBA players association. After retiring, he joined the San Antonio Spurs in 2012 as Gregg Popovich’s assistant.
It opened in June when the Celtics announced that Brad Stevens, who had coached the team for eight seasons, would become their new head of basketball operations. Jaylen Brown, one of the young stars of the Celtics, said: A recent interview with The Undefeated He said he told the team to recruit a Black candidate. “Representation was important to him,” he said.
“Players were asking and demanding and they wanted to see more guys like them,” Udoka said. “I think there’s been a shift in coaching from X’s and O’s and game plans to the value placed on relationships. And Black coaches have a natural cultural bond with their players.”
Udoka said he wasn’t suggesting that white coaches couldn’t bond with Black players. White has long cited Popovich as someone who has emphasized the importance of relationships. But for a new coach on a new team, it would be naive to believe that race isn’t a factor.
“Basketball is mostly minority-based,” Celtics quarterback Marcus Smart said in an interview. “So as a coach I can connect with him because I’m in the minority. I can say something to him or he can say something to me and we’ll understand. It’s different when you don’t. You have to try to understand, okay, how can I meet them halfway through?”
Still, a coach is a coach: Udoka suspended Smart for breaking an unspecified team rule in the team’s preseason finale.
‘The decision is coming quickly’
About three years ago, Rick Carlisle, as president National Basketball Coaches Association, felt that a growing number of junior assistants from diverse backgrounds were not getting a fair shake of their head coaching job.
The league and coaches association soon launched the NBA Coaches Equality Initiative, a program that aims to train young coaches and ensure that qualified candidates are visible when jobs arise. There have been numerous workshops, summits, panel discussions and networking opportunities since 2019.
And there is an app with a database of trainers that was introduced last year. It now includes profiles of nearly 300 coaches accessible to the league’s power commissioners — owners, general managers, team presidents, Carlisle said. Coaches can upload their backgrounds, philosophies and even interview clips. Consider Bumble for the NBA coaching kit. But it’s all part of a larger mission, he said. Oris Stuart, chief people and attendance officer for the league.
“We have ongoing conversations with our teams about the importance of making sure the process is inclusive when making decisions,” Stuart said in an interview. “We focus on the importance of making sure that the best talent is taken into account, that we provide broad reach, and that we go beyond the pre-established networks where people work.”
But in the past year, the hiring processes of two white coaches, including the one that brought Carlisle to the Indiana Pacers, have been criticized for not appearing inclusive.
The Minnesota Timberwolves removed Ryan Saunders from his coaching role in February and announced Chris Finch, who is white as his replacement, the same day. The Timberwolves chose not to promote David Vanterpool, the team’s assistant head coach, who is typically Black after a mid-season shootout. (Vanterpool is now Nets’ assistant.)
Roberts, executive director of the players union, was the perception that the Timberwolves were unlikely to seriously consider any Black candidates given their accelerated timelines. The timing of the change “got under the skin of a lot of people,” he added.
Within days, Carlisle and David Fogel, executive director of the coaches association, issued a statement expressing the organization’s “disappointment” with Minnesota’s quest, saying that “it is our responsibility to point out that an organization has failed to make it happen.” a comprehensive and transparent search for candidates from a wide variety of backgrounds.”
But just a few months later, in June, Carlisle accepted the Pacers’ job after what seemed like a shortened search. Indiana fired Nate Bjorkgren earlier in the month after just one season, and had only seen one other candidate when they offered Carlisle the job. Indiana general manager Chad Buchanan said in an interview that the team wanted a seasoned manager and was unexpectedly available after Carlisle left the Dallas Mavericks, where he coached for 13 seasons and won the title in 2011.
Buchanan tried to reassure Carlisle by telling him that the Pacers had interviewed 17 candidates, eight Black and one female, before they hired Bjorkgren eight months ago.
“It was something that worried me,” Carlisle said, “but once they gave me this information, I was comfortable moving forward.”
‘This is more of a systemic problem’
Wes Unseld Jr., an economist at Johns Hopkins University, thought he’d get into investment banking. But he interned with the Wizards for two summers before and after graduating in 1997. His father is Wes, who is also synonymous with the franchise. Hall of Fame playing daysAfter spending seven seasons as head coach, he moved into the front office as the team’s general manager. Elder Unseld invited his son to learn the ropes if the financial world wasn’t for him.
Wes Unseld Jr. remembers his father telling him, “If you’re going to be in this job, you have to learn the job.” “So I think, okay, I’ll be around basketball. ‘No, you will do internships in every department.’ PR, PR, marketing, sales – you name it, I did it.”
A great Division III player for Johns Hopkins, Unseld soon realized he couldn’t outrun the game and became one of many unnamed, behind-the-scenes fixtures in the NBA. Washington spent the next 16 as an assistant on various teams in the league. He refined the crimes. He made defenses. Along with the Wizards, known as the Genius for his attention to detail and his instinctive feel for the game. In Denver, he helped turn Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray into stars.
Still, Unseld was unable to find a head coaching job. He said he was never sure if race was a factor. Unseld says, “When an opportunity doesn’t arise, sometimes ‘Is that it?’ It’s easy to ask,” he said. “And it might have happened. It’s hard to say.”
After a record-breaking 14 Black coaches were on the bench at the start of the 2012-13 season, these numbers fell in the following years, showing how poor progress can be. Unseld said the NBA is “a networking business like any other business.”
“If you’re not committed to decision makers, it can be difficult,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s an obvious way not to be interviewed or give people of color a chance, but maybe they just don’t have a network to pull from. This is more of a systemic issue.”
Roberts commended the coaches’ association for working to resolve this issue in recent seasons. But he said that the real power comes from the players themselves.
“A happy team is probably a more successful team,” he said. “And if players feel that management is meddling with their voiced concerns about a coaching team, then what are their motivations to stay?”
In New Orleans, Willie Green often thinks of his uncle, Gary Green, who coached and instilled in him the basics while he was growing up in Detroit. After several years as an assistant at Golden State and Phoenix, Green said he felt an increased sense of responsibility.
“We have to be the keeper of these opportunities,” he said.
Garrett Jackson, a former player on Udoka’s AAU team in Boston, is now one of Udoka’s video coordinators. And Mosley narrowly won his first win for the Magic against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden. HE donated the game ball, then returned to business life.
“Like everything,” he said. “You just keep your head down and do your job.”
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